Saturday, November 20, 2010

I've been feeling a bit icky the last couple days and I also have had trouble deciding what project or projects to work on, but I have been making some progress.

I finished putting together the body of my purple crocheted purse.

I haven't attached the handles yet and I still do not know what fabric I want to use for the lining (I did buy some new fabric, but none is quite right). I also am not sure what sort of closure I want for the top. I've been thinking zipper, but I'm not sure if the zipper should be part of the lining or part of the outside of the purse.

Ok, that one is a bit stalled.

So, instead of figuring out what to do about it, I started work on another. Actually, I sketched out designs for two more that I've had in mind for a while and then started cutting out fabric for one of them. I bought this piece of vintage barkcloth (actually a curtain) a couple years ago. I made a cover for a floor pillow out of one of the curtains and designed and sewed a small purse (which was a bit of a failure) out of some of the extra fabric. I really love the sweet birds and flowers and the combination of colors of this fabric.

The new bag is going to be fairly big and I love the lining fabric I'll be using.

Here's a peek of the inside of the strap:

I've been cutting more roses and fully enjoying them. I'd been waiting for a yellow bud of Golden Celebration to open enough to cut. If I cut buds when the they are too tightly closed they won't open at all.

This one was just about perfect.

A spray of roses, perched atop a long stem on the climbing New Dawn, finally opened up, too. Makes me glad I put up with it grabbing at me every time I went in and out of the garage.

I did a little bit of painting, filling up a bowl with some gorgeous tomatoes. I worked on the tomatoes during the day yesterday. The tomatoes literally glowed in the light from my window as I worked and it was such fun painting them. When I stopped to let my painting dry, I decided not to do any work on the bowl until the next day. Then evening came and I changed my mind. The light was all wrong but for some reason I ignored my gut feeling and charged ahead.

Perhaps with a little work I'll be able to salvage it. I really enjoyed painting the tomatoes and was so sad when I realized that painting the bowl without the natural light casting real shadows wasn't going to work at all. Today it doesn't look as bad to me as it did last night. Yet another learning experience!

After that frustration I decided that I needed an easy crochet project that I could mindlessly work on for the rest of the evening. I looked through the downloads of patterns on my computer and found a shrug that looked very simple. Unfortunately the directions don't really work right, at least not the calculations for the number of chains for the foundation, the approximate length of that foundation and the number of motifs that will be crocheted into that foundation. I started it three times and took it apart three times before settling on the size of hook I wanted to use and fudging the number of chain stitches to start with. Maybe I would have been better off making up my own pattern after all.

Even so, the yarn is pretty (a wool and alpaca blend in a gorgeous turquoise) and once I got started the shell pattern did prove to be pretty easy to crochet without much thought or attention. I am a bit worried that I won't have enough yarn to finish the shrug. The designer's apparent math issues don't instill me with much confidence. I guess we'll see. I can always turn it into a purse if it doesn't work as a shrug.

Love watching your process here. A bit of this, a dash of that, works, doesn't work. My art does the same thing...I thought I was just unfocused but maybe it's an actual process. That said, I'm working on multi-media: beads on clay projects. That's my mindless work, esp since I have so many bright sparklies right now from the last wholesale show. Thanks for sharing! (oh, before I forget - LOVE that blue truck on your opening page!)

Your paintings are phenomenal! I Think the purse you're making in the vintage fabric is going to be beautiful as well. Now I need to look up what a shrug is! The turquoise yarn is definitely desirable.

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